Janet Hyland and Plain Paintings

Occupy Stock Exchange:start small!

2011-12-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

Occupy Stock Exchange;the Image says it all.

2011-12-17T01:32:00.000-08:00

Brass Band

Words

Christmas tree

Tent University

Tent City

Heritage:Rebecca,my daughter, her daughter

Im not sure who is directing who here!

Im going to paint this experience next year.

Occupy Stock Exchange: Art of Protest

2011-12-16T02:00:00.000-08:00

Banksy Street Art of Monopoly

Meeting at Occupy Stock Exchange site

2011-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

Friends,
Standing in solidarity with the Occupy Together movement on the steps of St Pauls cathedral, we know what it is to protest, to be vilified and persecuted, imprisoned and tortured. This Protestent cathedral is only here because people protested against the injustices and imbalances of their day. So its fitting that modern protesters camp on its steps, to remind them of their roots, and to remind us of our duty.

We are armed with nothing except this valuable sense of history, over 300 years of it. Again and again we come to this point and we know its a never ending cycle of division and unity, tearing apart and pulling together, striving for balance, and all you can do is support it.

Ive been looking back through the Red Book at the comments Quakers have been making for over 300 years. Such a small frail voice, but it keeps speaking.

Here it is in 1659 in Quaker origins during the English Civil War: “We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for this party, nor against another.....but we are here for Justice, Mercy, Peace and Freedom...and for Goodness ,for Unity with God and for one another, that all these may abound”.

And again in 1933 during the first banking crisis and Great Depression when the Quaker banks of Barclays/Lloyds/Gurney had a name for security and integrity and human values: “Do not grow rich at the expense of others. The guiding principle in making money should be the Good of others and the community at large, not simply making money for oneself and one’s family”.

And again in 1987 when the development of this Financial Sector first started to exploit the social divisions we see today: “We are angered by actions which have led to the polarization of our country, into the affluent who epitomise success according to the values of a materialistic society, and the “have-leasts” who, by the expectations of that same society, are oppressed, judged, found wanting and punished. We value that of god in everyone, and affirm the right of everyone to contribute to society and share in lifes good things, beyond the basic necessities. There must be no “them” and “us”. Wealth and power must be shared more evenly within our nation.”

And here we are again in 2011 in another civil war between the 99% and the 1%,a global civil war, joining the voice of dissent and outrage while knowing we will stand here again in future times. These protesters are “speaking Truth to Power”, not as misfits but as inheritors of a respected tradition. When the institutions of power are corrupt and self-serving then you have to make as one voice and form a new unity. Thats why Ive come from Ireland today.

(text slightly modified to make sense!)

Occupy Stock Exchange:Art of Protest

2011-12-16T01:47:00.001-08:00

Painting on Wood (1).Sign Painting of Niko Pirosmani

2011-12-05T03:03:00.000-08:00

My art belongs to a long tradition of untrained painters who work on wood,often considered "naive" because of the style.Examples are on the wooden coffin underlid of the Fayoum Portraits,icons,canal boat art,circus caravan art,painted wooden Romany caravans and sign painting.Maybe that,more than anything else, is what I am then, a sign painter...

My favourite naive artist is the sign painter, Niko from Georgia.He worked on dark backgrounds,usually wood but also tin or cardboard.His paint is illuminated by contrast on these dark backgrounds.He travelled from village to town,painting shop or business signs, and often portraits,making a little money but dying a beggar, anonymous with no grave to mark his story. His paintings were the fortune of art dealers who discovered him posthumously.

Wood painting is the tradition I respect and recognise.

Sign for a Wineshop

The Grape-pickers

Bear in Moonlight

The Beauty of Ortatchal

Deer Family

Yellow Lion Sitting

Painting on Wood (2). Travelling Circus

2011-12-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

This small family owned Italian circus came to town with its ornate painted wooden caravans and Big Top,spectacular even before performance, full of antiques like the chandeliers in the show ring.I think they found the Irish weather too cold because they never came again.Ive never seen painted circus caravans like this before or after so Im grateful for the experience.It seems unique to a dying artform.

Painting on Wood (3) Romany caravans

2011-12-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

We knew a travelling family that lived in the traditional hand painted wooden horse drawn caravans. Its a rare privilege to see inside one of these homes. A few years later the caravans were burnt out over a feud about women.These caravans are increasingly rare and works of art so it was a real loss.They cant be replaced.

The man was a carthorse trader and breeder. He traded horses at Spencil Hill, the major horse fair held annually nearby,a special social event for gypsies from all over Ireland. Trading is done by word with cash and spit on the palm.The tiny village of Spencil Hill is bloated with people and police shut off the roads. Horses and chariots and cars and people all mingling together, and a bit of matchmaking added because its springtime!Its a seasonal fair for country people.Its a simple life.

Painted caravans are a special art. Decoration is pattern and pattern is deep in the psyche,not ornament at all. You only have to look at the kerbstones of Newgrange or Knowth outside Dublin( older than the pyramids) to realise that pattern precedes representation,or rather that pattern IS representation of the psyche.

The Art of the Sewing Box

2011-11-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

I was reminded recently of toolboxes. Sons tend to inherit their father’s toolbox while daughters inherit their mothers sewing box and the history of these useful if not valuable inheritances is interesting. We overlook their importance and the tales they tell about division of labour, of men working silently in the sanctity of their sheds with drills and hammers and the smell of wood shavings, of women seated together sharing the secrets of darning socks, hemming or knitting patterns in low soft voices.

These collections go back generations. My own, photographed here, goes back to my great grandmother in the form of an early Singer sewing machine, hand wheeled in walnut wood, lovingly polished and cared for, with all its original spare parts and spools and instruction booklet and key. It has served all my purposes and Ive never seen the need to upgrade it. Besides, I enjoy the feel of the wood, the slow turning wheel, the clunk of its mechanics. My daughters also use it with some amusement. Its not just a thing but an experience.

My Pakistani friend would visit to alter her clothes and help by turning the wheel as I held the cloth through the needle, a strange situation for me. I realized this was how work was done in Pakistan, that work was just as much about a bonded experience as about efficiency. In fact, ultimately this way of work was more efficient because it created a community and that community was the durable economics of itself. So the Singer machine takes me to Pakistan and also to Egypt because the antique shops there are full of these old sewing machines, a remnant from the colonial period,like the antique Rolls Royces that are still driven in Cairo. It tells me of worlds that aren’t consumer driven, of their significance.

My grandmothers elegant small scissors are photographed here, and some of her needles and buttons in the button box.( We used to trade buttons and beads from this box in “swapsies” in the school playground.) All of this came to my mother who added her own touch of cotton threads and pin cushion, needle threader, thimble, knitting needles and crochet hooks. She loved to sew, make afghan throws and patchwork blankets. It seemed to give her a rhythm and order, a sense of peace. Women sewing threads is an archetypal image, part of the mythology we also inherit. It ties you in to a culture.

Images flood in through these artifacts. I see my paternal grandmother’s Victorian house, the huge mahogany dining table, the tea caddy with lock and key, the scullery with dairy products kept in a gauze fronted cupboard in the cold cellar, no fridge, the winding staircase to various levels, the pet tortoise in the garden, the grandfather clock loudly ticking and chiming, the coalman pouring coal into the coal cellar with the leather on his shoulders to protect his back, the marble frontsteps washed and wiped every week, the washing collected every Monday…but NO sewing on a Sunday. It was a house of three women whose men had died in the Wars, and a male child who was too sickly to go to school until he reached double digits. Co-operation was important to survival in those days, and sewing together seemed to epitomize that.

I also see my mother mending, darning, making do after the war years with these needles and pins. When the middle of the double sheets wore thin she cut them in half and sewed “sides to middle” to extend the life of the sheet. She darned socks and stockings, the stitches so neat and small. It was an artform with secret skills. By the time she finished you could hardly see the stitches. Sadly I never mastered this art form. The skill is lost in our throwaway society. When she finished she showed tremendous satisfaction, that she had made something out of nothing and saved expenditure. It was a display of virtue perhaps, not just a chore. As society moved forward into the 1960’s she seemed to live back a generation into the Victorian era. It was as if a world that no longer existed existed here in defiance, preserved in anachronism. That gave me a strange view of the Present as I struggled to live it.

So the sewing box and its accompaniments hold many memories and happenings, not something you can buy but something you accumulate from lives lived, like wrinkles. My daughters will accumulate it too, though I wonder what images will flood back to them when they inherit. Images of togetherness I think, so that although the specifics are different the sentiment is the same. The sewing box is a woman’s chain of transmission, linking us all together in space and time, practical and mythical. We build it up from past collections, and we pass it on.

Remembering Jordans 1(published in "The Friend" 28-10-2011)

2011-11-01T02:53:00.000-07:00

My first experience of Quakers was in the 1970’s when I was about 17.A girl invited me to a village bonfire party, a place called Jordans, but I had no idea she was a Quaker and that this had been a Quaker community since 1688, the burial place of William Penn who founded Pennsylvania. It felt like a great adventure –

“There is inspiration to be found all around us, in the natural world, in the sciences and arts, in our work and relationships, in our sorrows as in our joys. Are you open to new light, from whatever source it may come? Do you approach new ideas with discernment?”

We arrived at a toy like railway station in the middle of nowhere, like stepping into an Enid Blyton story, and she did live close by in Beaconsfield. We were surrounded by Beech Woods and darkness, a single light glowing over the nameplate, “Seer Green and Jordans”. I had never experienced danger like this before, having had quite a narrow upbringing. My friend’s confidence amazed me as she led us over the obstacle course of tangled roots and rotting leaves, the air moist and musty. She seemed so daring and fearless, cloven footed as she picked the path out through the woods. I followed, alive with fear and anticipation, soaking up the moment, making a memory -

“Live adventurously. Let your life speak. Every stage of our lives offers fresh opportunities. Attend to what Love requires of you, which may not be great busyness.”

Eventually the woods opened out onto a green with a ring of red bricked connected cottages, a little shabby, unassuming, quaint. Figures were moving about in the smoke filled bonfire light. In the cottage I met pet white rats and a man who was an inventor, rooms that were dimly lit by an open fire and cosy, not fancy, artisans and artists, a man in an armchair animated in discussion –

“Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength. Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford. Do not let the desire to be sociable or fear of seeming peculiar determine your decisions.”

We walked from cottage to cottage, where we were served sausages or soup, baked potatoes or tea. We were fed conversation too, such as I had never heard before, straight as an arrow and without small talk or loops, looking you in the eye, enquiring, informing, not argument or opinion or assertion, but the collecting of ideas, real food for thought, sustenance. These conversations in small cottages spoke to me in a language I understood. It was like coming home after residing in a foreign country. I don’t remember the subject matter, only the means of them saying it. As a child I had often wondered how it is conversations are held saying nothing when the real conversation remains unsaid inside. These people spoke their Minds and the inside was outside for all to know, genuine conversation, qualitatively different. They made the words mean something and they listened in the gaps. This was such a liberation. It took my breath away-

“Listen patiently and seek the truth which the other person’s opinion may contain for you. Try to sense what has nourished the lives of others. Avoid hurtful criticism and provocative language. Do not allow the strength of your conviction to betray you into making statements and allegations that are unfair or untrue. Think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Later someone said, “Lets go up the motorway and see where it ends”, and off we went in old cars up an empty motorway, across the Vale of Oxford to ascend the Cotswolds. Hours later we stopped, got out and looked back over the journey taken before driving home. There was no reason for this journey. We did it because we could. We were just alive to the moment. In hindsight I realise the motorway had just been opened and that we were embracing the technological advances of the day. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. That night I stepped out of my sheltered safe world into the endless vistas of possibility and in sharing their lives they included mine-

“How can we make a community in which each person is accepted and nurtured and strangers are welcome? Respect the wide diversity among us in our lives and in our relationships. Seek to know one another in the things that are eternal.”

I owe these people an extraordinary memory; the man grasping the armchair with his thoughts, the woman cooking sausages on the stove, the talking faces flickering in firelight, the glance back through the car rear window at an empty motorway as we hurtled towards the unknown, the girl tracking through the woods, all simple and profound. I went on to University and other things but I often revisit that village to remember that it started here when the Mind was fed sausages! That night they showed me courage, straight speech, and curiosity. They showed me another way, and I took it-

“Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, where ever you come, that your carriage and life may speak among all sorts of people, and then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of god in everyone. Let your life speak.”

(Quotes from “Advice and Queries”)

Cottages round the Green

The Rent House on Village Green

Remembering Jordans 2

2011-11-01T02:39:00.000-07:00

Jordans Burial Ground,including grave of William Penn.
Quaker graves are all the same and basic because, whatever you accumulate or own in a lifetime,everyone ends up with the same plot of land in death, usually 6 foot by 3 foot!Its a sobering thought that brings a sense of balance and peace to anyones life.

Entrance Hall
Leads to Meeting Room and Library.

One of earliest purpose built Quaker Meeting Houses at Jordans, 17Century.
Simple on the outside and the inside.

Hidden Ireland 1 . Monastic settlements.

2011-09-26T03:57:00.002-07:00

There is an alternative to the tourist trail in Ireland, a hidden Ireland known to its locals and shared with friends. Let me take your hand and guide you through a few of them.

First are the hidden sights of The Burren, which is a lunar landscape in north west Clare. Its desolate limestone contours change colour in the light as the day progresses, from blue to purple to white. Many international films have been made here, like Harry Potter and Asterix, and many Irish films like “Into the West”. There is nothing more beautiful than the moon rising over the white limestone behind Fanore beach.

Hidden in its cracks and valleys and hard to find (I always get lost) are the ruined monastic settlements of a form of Christianity that arrived before St. Patrick. This Celtic Christianity came up from the west by sea from Egypt where it was first developed by Copts in the desert around Tabennesi in 318AD. By the 5th Century it was flourishing in Ireland. An 11th century manuscript in Dublin describes “7 Egyptian monks who lived in Disert Vilaig on the west coast of Ireland”. The Copts are also taught about these 7monks in their tradition. Disert, as an Irish place name means “remote” or desert. Some Irish surnames like Fahy are also Coptic surnames. So the northern wastelends of Ireland were linked with the southern wastelands of Egypt by strings of monastic settlements.

These communities were independent and not centralised, often a days journey from each other. While some members were celebate, others were not, and whole families lived together, congregating around a revered teacher, a “collegiate” system still practiced in the collegiate system of Oxford and Cambridge today. They were recognised for their learning, their libraries and scriptoriums where books like The Book of Kells or Durrow were housed. Their calligraphy and knotwork is reminiscent of Coptic art. Both traditions show a love of life and Nature, a keen observation of their surroundings and a wry sense of humour. Its these communities that sent out educators to the rest of Europe, still languishing in the dark ages. They were constantly travelling, exchanging ideas and experiences. The Book of Kells is now in Dublin in Trinity College Library.

The Copts and Celts shared a form of Christianity derived from St Mark, not the St Peter of Roman Catholicism, focusing on the humanity of Jesus, not his divinity. It wasn’t about military might and tight centralised control. It was dispersed and about discourse. There was no infant baptism because there was no concept of original sin. They embraced Life without fear of death. Their leaders are depicted with the Tau shaped staff instead of the catholic crozier. In Ireland they preferred white robes and wore their hair long behind a tonsure shaved back to the earline, reminiscent of the Druids who had preceded them on the island. Their “saints” were learned men like sheiks, chosen by the community, not centrally ordained by anyone. They prayed with palms uplifted, like the copts and muslims, not closed together. Their churchyards are full of the celtic wheel/cross which originated in Egypt on Coptic graves, reminiscent of the ankh as symbol of Life. They had a 9th century equivalent to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, called St Brendan Voyages to the Island of the Blest. They believed in re-incarnation and the pre-existence of soul.

This Celtic Christianity is as little known as their settlements. By the 11Century it had vanished, largely because The Synod of Whitby had declared it heretical. From then on Roman Catholicism dominated and the monks moved on, finding other places to teach like Southern France.

However it’s still here in a way, to re-fresh us, hidden for the finding, places of power and refuge. Whatever the weather, these sites seem encapsulated in tranquillity, full of the sounds of Nature, a strange enduring energy.

Below,this 11Century Romanesque doorway at Dysert O’dea, proves how well the monks travelled ,recording faces and animals from all over their known world, from the far east to the far west. Everyone is represented here, universal, no exclusion, all can enter through this door. Its a nice image. Dysert O’dea began in the 8Century as a community around Saint Tola. The site is spread around and not centralised, hidden in lush wooded valleys with whispering winds.

Kilmacdough is another monastic settlement scattered around several churches, again not centralised and very peaceful. Its a place that seems to trap and amplify sounds. Here you find one of the Round Towers unique to Ireland and described in Yeats poems as watchtowers. They are also the Rapunzel Towers of the fairy tale, though Rapunzels golden hair is really the monks gold treasure hoarded at the top. They were built as places of refuge from the invading Vikings. Once inside the monks lifted up the ladder and there was no means of entry because the door is over 26feet up, so “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, lay down your golden hair”! This tower is 111ft high, the tallest in Ireland, and leaning 2 feet from the perpendicular. This may be why it fills me with dread every time I visit. Its an ingenious form of defence isn’t it, but it didn’t save them.

Hidden Ireland 2. Caves

2011-09-22T05:44:00.001-07:00

These caves are a well kept secret, not found on any maps.You have to know a friend of a friend of a farmer who owns the land to find them.There are many hidden caves like this on farmland in ireland.

I found stone age flint cutting tools here in the overhanging caves when the river level is low.

The light through the leaves sparkles like jewels,but the water is utter darkness where no light shines.

These caves have never been developed so the surroundings are untouched, as they were thousands of years ago.Its a humbling experience to stand here in footprints left by others, also passing through.Transient and disorientating. The breathing changes. Light headed and green. Time suspends itself.Everything stills to this moment.This silence....and secrets best kept.

Hidden Ireland 3. Places of Pilgrimage

2011-09-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

Pilgrimage is still a part of Irish tradition, that urge to wander and break from attachment.The destination would be a Holy Well like St Brigets round the Burren headland or a Fairy Fort like that near Ailwee Caves, or a hilltop like Croagh Patrick that is climbed barefoot every year. People still go to these places out of remembrance and leave ribbons or trinkets,rosaries or tokens,say a prayer or make a wish.The tree at the centre of Ailwee fairy fort is draped in ribbons.Its a living tradition, not a tourist attraction.

Hidden deep in the Clare countryside is the ruined cottage of Biddy Early, the 18C wisewoman who was charged with witchcraft because of her ability to heal with herbs, and because she was a free spirit living outside church control and inside of 3 marriages!

The local storyteller of international renown, Eddy Lenihan,has collected all the stories about her,and those who know of her still visit the cottage to leave tokens and make a wish.The glass blue bottle left behind by someone here is a reference to the blue bottle she used to "see into" the sickness of those who sought her help.

Hidden Ireland 4. Music

2011-09-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

Ireland is a landscape of music, some public for tourists,some hidden for each other.

Music shapes the pubs and clubs and festivals, and plays non stop for a month at Lisdoonvarna,during the September Matchmaking Fair,traditionally held at the end of the agricultural year when the farmers are looking for somewhere else to sow their seed!Beauty is traded for land in equal proportions, and that still is the universal prevailing exchange currency between women and men....or so it seems.

Peppers Pub in Feakle holds weekly sessions all year for locals and tourists. Martin Hayes, the great Clare fiddler now living in USA often returns to play impromptu and unpaid, for the sheer love of the session. If you are lucky you catch him,like recently he was back to get married and play music.

More difficult to find are the sessions in the middle of nowhere that happen without warning or advertisement.Driving down the lanes you get lost but hear fiddle music that seems to draw you in,like the old stories of bewitching fairy music.Its a fatal attraction and steals the night from you.

But the best hidden music of Ireland takes place spontaneously in ordinary households,a moment shared.Here are pictures of that happening in our house recently,my two girls with tin whistles and slip jigs arm in arm, and Amneris from Argentina singing Tango learnt from downtown Buenos Aires.We were so blessed to hear these two traditions of music,a richness beyond costing.

Odd to hear the shanos of Ireland with the Tango of Argentina.I dont think its a combination that happens very often.

Fern in August

2011-08-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

This beautiful fern is full view from a window in our house.It concentrates me when I paint.
I create a garden that reflects natural plants naturally, so the honeysuckle over the gate hides the house from the road and the red blooded fushia grows wild in the hedges with the pink rambling roses.Colour and scent. The formation of hanging honeysuckle reminds me of the mocarabes of The Alhambra in Granada.Plants are very measured,Nature's architecture.
I learn a lot from this garden.

Nought to Report

2011-07-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

Its July and I have nothing to say.

The white boards for the next paintings are puzzle pieces that slot together.

We are off to London again, staying near Nunhead Victorian Cemetery and hoping to savour the Brick Lane Curry Houses...and the new Picasso in the Tate Modern.Which is the better feast I wonder?

Anyone else joining the ongoing lunchtime peace demo in Trafalgar Square?

Goths and Girls

2011-06-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

No paintings in mind at the moment. Summer is always a time of travel because the girls are off school...though I am preparing boards,cutting,sanding, white-washing etc.Its relaxing because its practical and no concentration needed.Im working on random shapes for the boards this time.And looking at medieval "Books of Hours".

I went down memory lane recently too,looking at pictures of punk goth days, so here's a photo of two goths at a garden party!Its Fathers day in Ireland today.This photo is B.C. (before children!)

The necklace is from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. I wear Bedoiun jewellery,silver with bells,collected from my travels.They make a lovely sound when you move. Sophy says she will always associate that sound with the mamma!

And this photo is after children! Arent they beautiful.Taken in the gardens of the Rupert Brooke tea rooms at Granchester,one of my favourite places near Cambridge. Its a nice walk into the city from there along the river.

Jessy has that ethereal Irish look,while Sophy has an almond eyed Indian look that must go back to her Indian Great-grandfather.

The Fayoum Portraits

2011-06-01T00:00:00.001-07:00

If you take the pyramids road out of Cairo and drive south west for about an hour you come to the Fayoum, which is an oasis with lake.In the first century it was populated by gnostic groups like the Essenes.Now its populated by fishermen and those wanting to live an alternative lifestyle.Then,as now,its a very still and tranquil place.

A friend drove me down this road in an antique cream open roof Silver Cloud Rolls Royce.Cars dont rust in the desert climate so they seem to have eternal life!As we went he gave out money to the children in the villages.He had friends living there who had built their houses according to the Egyptian architect,Hassan Fathy (see "architecture for the poor").I met Fathy in a room full of shadows,just weeks before he died.He was pouring over his drawings but not coherent.

Fathy is an Irish surname too..but then Egyptian Copts are taught that Irish monks and Egyptian monks had strong links,travelling by sea.These new age houses in the Fayoum have trees growing inside them like an oasis within an oasis.

Some of the most beautiful portraits ever painted were found here. They were never intended to be seen because they were executed in wax encaustic on the underlid of coffins.They were portraits of the dead as living.You can see the influence of these portraits on one of the earliest icons of Jesus,now housed in St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai desert.It too is stunning.

Sinai icon 7thCentury

New age houses in Fayhoum

"Suspiro de Moro" : Sigh of the Moor

2011-05-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

When the last Moor sultan stood at a point south of Granada now on the N323 motorway called “Puerto del Suspiro del Moro” and looked back for the last time at his beloved Alhambra, the sigh he exhaled was profound – not just about the loss of a palace but also the rich and unified culture it represented. As he rode on into exile the clouds of intolerant catholic Spain closed in behind him amassing whispers of exclusions and expulsions, and a judgemental Inquisition. The moment was over, as it was for William Penn in Pennsylvania or Akbar at his Moghul Court, for Hellenist Alexandria or Tibet as the Dalai Lama similarly rode into exile.

And this painting is my own sigh. I am unashamedly in love with this building and its significance, the fact that its fragility survived at all, and though I paint it with my hand I know it with my heart- every twist and turn, every rhythm of arabesque or unfolding geometry, every discreetly placed symbol, its shifting interplay of light and shadow.

Something in it reminds us of something perhaps- that unitary society of our aspirations or that unitary reality we glimpse occasionally. The architects knew both. Such a private, outwardly modest building, it belies its hidden interior treasures, but all who pass through it are irrevocably moved. It influenced the writer Washington Irving who lived in it, Gaudi who imitated its stucco and soaring mocarabes, its water stairway. Civil engineers reproduced its irrigation and hydraulic systems and paradise gardens in English country estates like Chatsworth. It influenced the architects of the Taj Mahal in Agra, and musical compositions by Debussy and The Grateful Dead. Escher returned again and again to understand its mathematical ingenuity of mosaics and ceramic tiles, the geometry of infinity, impossibility, tessellation, symmetry and motion, all of which he incorporated into his own illusory art where Maths and Mysticism collide. Its influence is in William Morris wallpaper designs and Salman Rushdie’s “Moors Last Sigh”. Its power is timeless, like that fairy story about a hidden exotic palace opening up suddenly from a door that is hard to enter.

The Alhambra is not a loud imperialist demonstration of power like the Palace of Carlos V beside it. Its a quiet personal demonstration of devotion. It was part of a civil society as sophisticated as any we have today, with sewage and irrigation systems, flushing toilets and baths, libraries and law courts, school and university..and even the first recorded mental hospital, using a fully developed system of psychotherapy based on Sufi psychology, most of which we now know as Jungian depth analysis.

They understood the Soul as we now understand the Psyche. Sickness was simply a question of imbalance. They considered everyone was on a life journey (quest) through contraries towards unity. Consciousness is the guiding force as it orientates the Self like a boat at sea. The Outside and the Inside were considered the same and every step outward was also a step inward with the soul and cosmos as One under the same governing laws. Their techniques towards this end were practical, not speculative.

The Alhambra is built according to these principles of harmony where the world of contraries meet to make a unitary reality. This knowledge is encoded in the structures like the Kings Hall where the rooms alternate light and dark, in the decor as plant patterns expand and contract out of each other until they unite in a final flourish, in the calligraphy that illustrates poetic truths, or in the representative scenes of medieval tales on Paintings so unusual in Islamic art. The sufi architect was a geometer (Muhundis), trained to co-ordinate music, art, Mathematics and philosophy. The overall effect is mesmerizing with rooms infused with light or alternating light with dark, courtyards that seem suspended in air and water reflections that suggest impermanence and the illusory nature of Life. The red lookout towers of the outer fortress walls, the white marble zodiacal lions circling the lip of the inner water fountain, the tricolour sages sitting round a cosmic table in the painting in the Kings Hall –all watch over the various levels of our existence.

The buildings span several generations from 1238 to 1491 but Mohammed V is responsible for the esoteric Lion Palace and Ibn Zamrak is the court adviser whose epigraphic poems adorn the walls. His poem on the lion fountain refers to the Pleiades constellation of stars that rise above the courtyard sky at night. He brought the guitar and toothpaste to Europe, playing his Bedouin love songs that inspired the troubadours. But its western byzantine artists who are responsible for the paintings on the wall, scenes of medieval jousts, Christian and Muslim knights fighting wild animals, a lady and knight together playing Chess. Its possible Ibn Zamrak is the figure buried at Rabita de San Sebastion in Granada, the only sufi shrine in Europe, now a small church.

They built The Alhambra to float in the shape of a boat on an outcrop over the city, and that boat imagery repeats itself throughout- from the upturned hull of Sala de la Barca to the illustrative stucco calligraphy where the letters form the bodies of people standing on a boat, also spelling out the warning, “Only Allah is victor”. Its a curb to human excess and hubris, to imbalance. And its a familiar sufi motif, Mevlavi (1291) uses it in his fable about travellers in a boat at sea called “The Islanders”. Its a reminder of the human situation. “Remember” it says “This is your situation .Do not inflate yourself. You are only human and there is a greater more powerful reality”.

Here it all is then – the insignificant door of entry, the courtyard reflections that delude or clarify, the sages and lions that squat like sentinels, the tourists who journey in as they journey in, the view down to the earth and the city, the view up to the sky and star constellations. The Alhambra holds the balance, equipoised and serene....and ultimately its an experience you have to have for yourself.

1)Central panel divided into 4: Comares Tower reflected in pool of Courtyard of Myrtle bushes with Goldfish : door of entry to Alhambra : Reflections in Palace of lions : Sage painting in Hall of Kings
2)Side panel right. Tourists in Courtyard of Lions.
3)Side panel left. Tourists in Courtyard of Myrtles.
4)Top panel right. Looking up to 7 visible stars of Pleiades from Lion Courtyard.
5)Top panel left : Looking down to Granada from Mexuar Oratory.

She'll never remember "Forgotten Dreams" !!!!

2011-05-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we were in Covent Garden, London to see the Herzog film, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"......and Jessy fell sleep. She missed most of it. Hilarious. The commentary was SO boring and irrelvant...but the visuals were stunning.Its the only chance to see these caves "for real" anyway so I had to take it....but it serves me right. Jessy sleeping is the best critique Ive seen on the film!

The only interesting comment in the film was made by a minor researcher who was working with Australian Aborigine artists.He asked an artist "What are you painting?" and the Aborigine replied "Im not painting,its spirit".

And there you have it explained...no need for Herzog.

The Girls

2011-04-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Alhambra. Final section and Mothers Day

2011-04-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished my painting and today we celebrated that and Mothers Day.These are great days...

The Girls celebrating Mothers Day in Ireland.

Alhambra preview. Top right panel in situ

2011-03-18T09:58:00.001-07:00

Alhambra preview Top right panel

2011-03-18T09:55:00.001-07:00

Alhambra Preview 3

2011-02-20T03:13:00.001-08:00

In situ with central panel

Bottom left panel. Myrtle courtyard with tourists

Alhambra Preview 2

2011-01-22T01:52:00.001-08:00

In situ with central panel.

Bottom right panel.Lion Courtyard with tourists.

The Transfigurative Art of Francis Bacon

2011-01-10T00:18:00.000-08:00

Considered one of our greatest modern artists, Francis Bacon was a contradiction in his Art and in his lifestyle. He is usually classified as a post modernist ‘figurative painter’ whose work demonstrates violent distortion, an artistic vandalism designed to shock or alienate where the “outside seems to be eaten away by the inside”(Bertolucci). Equally, he was renowned for his flamboyant hedonistic lifestyle focused on roulette and the criminal/ gay underworld of Soho in London. (See this in action in the Melvyn Bragg South Bank Show interview on DVD!)

However once he shut the door on this public persona he entered the very different world of his studio, a tiny plain walled room without modern convenience or décor, disassembled in 1998 and reconstructed at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. This room suggests an ascetic monk’s cell more than a famous artist’s studio, austere and without windows, lit by one skylight and one free hanging blue daylight bulb, often depicted in his paintings, using walls as a palette. Here he painted daily, alone in sober silence, using cut and sliced photos instead of living models, intensely concentrated within his psyche, an antidote to his evening’s excess.

In this room they found prized relics of spiritual significance; photos of the C13th Cimabue Crucifixion that influenced his own Crucifixion work, the C17th Velazquez Pope that influenced his screaming Pope series, a statue of the death mask of the mystic poet, William Blake. There were photos of icons too. And it’s true that Bacons favourite choice of form was not modern, but the medieval religious triptych. These things obviously mattered to him and his art.

Like icon painters, Bacon worked repetitively on limited set compositions, isolated figures that look out from minimal flat backgrounds in spaces without perspective or natural light and shadow. Like them he moulds those figures with loving care and reverence and without anatomy, in limited coded colours. It’s as if his studio conditions created the same state of Mind as medieval iconographers, inwardly attentive, descending deep into the Psyche/Soul to recover and record the inner significance of outer form.

Bacon is misunderstood. He really belongs to the tradition of ‘Transfigurative Art’, not distorting but transforming, not shocking but astonishing, not brutalizing or inhuman but attempting to portray qualities uniquely human, “that deepen the mystery”. His work transports us beyond sense perception and appearance to capture the living essence or soul of a subject and his paintings breathe on the canvas.

“There is the appearance”, he says, “and then there is the energy within the appearance, a living quality that emanates”. These are iconographic sentiments where the painting is considered the living embodiment of a figure, not representation. In icons the eyes were always painted last to seal the most important point of the painting because the “eyes were the window of the soul” where inside meets outside, not the vanishing point of post Renaissance linear perspective, but the meeting point of the unseen with seen, the place where two worlds meet. (That’s why the eyes were always scratched out by iconoclasts, to deny that presence). Bacon’s figures also centre from the eyes instead of principles of perspective.

This is all starkly medieval for a self-styled modern hedonist! “Image, not illustration”, Bacon says of his work. And it’s interesting that ‘image’ is also the meaning of ‘icon’ from the Greek ‘eikon’. Image is of the Imagination unique to Man and special to William Blake whose death mask must have been a constant reminder of this process to Bacon, the expanding Imagination that makes our Inside bigger than our Outside, like the tardis in Doctor Who!

Those artists who restrict themselves to appearance or abstraction, representation or ‘photographic’ realism, are in fact more reductive and damaging to our sensibilities than anything Bacon painted, however harmless or ‘real’ they appear. It is deceitful to pretend art is real. It is they who brutalize and dehumanize as they simulate surface sight, where as Bacon tried to paint a greater totality that includes the inside. In fact his paintings are more honest and true. We know that because we all experience an inside as well as an outside, and know how one affects the other. How he would have chuckled at the thought, that so called Realism is more distorting and disturbing and damaging to human sensibility than any of his paintings.

Privately, where things mattered in his studio and not in what he called the ‘inconsequential life’ of his nightly ramblings round Soho, he would have agreed. “I want to produce concentrated images that deepen the mystery of constantly changing appearance according to ones nervous system. Not illustration or abstract or pictorial narrative, but a maker of images, getting to the essence to give a vision of the reality of things”. So he puts himself in another’s place sympathetically, to see them from the inside as well as outside, painting with compassion rather than violence, producing effigies rather than deformities. He only painted those he loved, and he painted as an act of Love in order to capture the soul of his subjects.

Like James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Samuel Becket or recently Bob Geldof, Bacon left a conservative, rigid Ireland to engage with a modern world that would allow free expression in Life and Art, yet in that freedom they all still expressed depths of soul endemic to those cultural roots. Peering out from empty, desolate, soulless backgrounds with their lifeless logical lines and arrows, is the steady, affirming soulful gaze of Bacons figures, twisted but defiant , tortured but beautiful, showing us ourselves fully human with outsides “transfigured” by insides, just as the icon painters did before him.

Icons;anonymous 11/13th Century

Self-portrait and friends by Francis Bacon

The Story of Light (written 2008)

2010-12-16T23:57:00.000-08:00

Here we are again at the season of the Festivals of Light,whatever the religion or circumstance,reminding me of this study I wrote in 2008. I have always been interested in the play of light in all its aspects. I remember revising for school exams at the bottom of the garden under fruit trees,watching dappled sunlight dancing through the leaves.Why is it a blackbird can hear the sound of a worm moving below ground but not appear to hear the plane roaring overhead,I thought in that garden.Now I know the answer: the bird is not tuned in to hear the plane because it is not part of its existence, therefore the plane does not exist....if you are a bird.Likewise we are tuned in to the limitations of our own existence, and do not know that what we know is only part of something else.

THE STORY OF LIGHT AND COLOUR IN THREE LANGUAGES

The story of Light and its colours is always the same, whether told in the language of Science, Myth or Psychology because our Consciousness is the same. Everything, including ourselves, is painted and drawn by the Light much as an artist’s brush colours the canvas, and we are only Real in terms of this Light. The colours we experience are the “hidden treasures” of the light beam made known to us, made conscious. So the act of Light is an act of illumination made conscious inside as revelation or outside as revealed creation. The act itself cannot be seen/known directly, but out of nowhere it is reflected to us by the images of intellect inside, or by the coloured forms of matter outside. Beyond this is utter darkness or the uncreated unknowable. There we do not “see” or exist and are without reflection, like Dracula in the mirror.

The light beam strikes and a form is revealed. It enlightens and orientates, inside and outside, since the body can act as connective tissue. With the light we feel good, warm, comfortable, safe. Forms that most reflect or represent it are given spiritual values, like fire, gold, lightning, white and angels. Light properties appear weightless, invisible, ineffable, ascending, untouchable, mysterious, beautiful, powerful and Good because closer to the Light. Forms that imprison the light and prevent its reflection appear solid, dense, dark, black and disturbing, devils. Their properties are cold, heavy, impenetrable, repulsive, descending, corporeal and Evil because furthest from the Light. However this act of Light has created both out of itself, the light and the darkness that constitute the cosmic play. That which appears dark still contains a degree of light, as that which appears light also contains darkness. Anything beyond this cannot be known or told since we are bound by our light-sensitivity. We can only choose a language to tell the story that we know.

SCIENCE says the light ray is made visible by its interaction with Matter through the interpretive medium of Eye and Brain. This interaction concerns refraction, absorption and reflection, manifesting as shape and colour. An object that reflects all the light appears white or invisible. An object that imprisons most of the light appears black or solid.

When the light beam is diffracted, those light waves that are in phase or co-ordinated create more light in the form of bright lines, light upon light. Those waves that are out of phase and uncoordinated create dark lines. These dark lines come from the light beam and are not an absence of light. Light waves working together intensify the light and light waves in opposition create the darkness. So light produces itself and darkness out of its own action, alternating.

The light beam itself is invisible white light but the 7 colours of the spectrum can be dispersed through a prism (Newton) or projected colour can be superimposed to reconstruct white light (Young).The colours are contained in the light. When an object is illuminated it reflects and absorbs the light to varying degrees. All objects receive the three primary light colours of Red, Blue and Green, not the same primary colours as paint pigment. The secondary light colours are cyan blue (blue and green light), magenta (red and blue light) and yellow (green and red light).The painters pigment behaves differently with yellow as a primary and green as a secondary. In this way a tomato appears red because it absorbs the light colours except red, which it reflects back.

When light paints a black object all the light is being absorbed so the object is reflecting the least light and is “in the dark”, appearing black. When light paints a white object most of the light is being reflected and the object appears white or “in the light”. In terms of colour frequency and the nervous system, orange, yellow and red are at one end of the scale, reflecting the most light and appearing as warm, demonstrative, active or advancing. The blue/ violets are at the other end of the scale, absorbing more of the light and appearing as cold, reflective and retreating. Green is in the middle, a synthesis or integration, emitting at 540 terahertz where the human eye reaches its maximum sensitivity and is most attentive. So our coloured forms of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet are a system in reflection.

All Creation MYTHS begin with God as Light emerging out of the void. The Greek/Latin root meaning for Deus (god) is “shining/light of day”. Some myths emphasise the external, “God moved and said let there be Light and there was Light, and God saw that it was Good”(Genesis 1:1), or “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth, neither of the east nor of the west, who would shine even if no fire touched it, Light upon Light.”(Quran 24:35). Others emphasise the internal, “the Self is the Light reflected by all/ he, alone shining, everything shines after him.”(Katha Upanishad 5:15).

This original unity of Light, the “all seeing or omniscient God”, splits and descends into a creation that always spans the number 7 for its completion; 7 Biblical days of creation, 7 celestial planes of the Aryrans,7 valleys of the Way in Islam,7 ages of man in a lifetime,7 steps of the Buddha to enlightenment, 7 strings to Apollo’s lyre,7 pillars of wisdom in the Hebrew temple,7 levels to the Mesopotamian ziggurat ,7 heavens of perfection, 7planets and 7 rays to the sundisk in Christian iconography. This Creation is a Fall into division between polarities( “and god divided the light from the darkness”, Genesis 1:5) and the subsequent struggle of the light in Man to put itself back together or orientate itself with the darkness (solar hero/spark of light).

The oldest record of this myth is Indo/Iranian (800BC), where Vaya Zurvan (infinity/void) gives birth to twin brothers, Ahriman who consciously chooses the opposition of darkness, disorientation, Lies and Evil, and Ahura Mazda who chooses to stay with the light, orientation, Truth and Good. They differ by choice, not by innate nature. Their rivalry causes the Fall from heaven and struggle on earth until the final restitution of unity or endtime. Azura Mazda is always depicted in “flaming splendour” with light emanating from his head in the form of a halo. Though he appears to lose the battle, it’s his self-sacrifice and consequent enlightenment or transfiguration that restores the primordial unity.

This pattern repeats itself endlessly amongst the myths. For the Hebrews it became the battle of Shaher (the descendent one, devil, evil, later Lucifer) and Shalem (the ascendant one, saviour, light, later Jesus), brothers born of Asherah, the Great Mother. In Egypt it is the battle between Horus (light) and his twin brother, Seth (darkness), born of Osiris and Isis. In Celtic the battle is between Dylan (darkness) and Lleu/Lugh (light), sons of Arianrhud, the Goddess of Fate. In Greek the battle is between Apollo (light/sun/son) and his twin sister, Artemis (moon/ night).In Rome the twins are Castor (light) and Pollux (dark) sons of the sungod, Zeus. In Scandinavia the battle is between Baldur (light/saviour) and Loki (trickster/dark), sons of Odin. It’s Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau. In all these myths the created world is the battleground (Psychomachy) where the solar hero (saviour/light figure/lightbearer) tries to restore a unity that necessitates his own sacrifice since he is also part of that creation. His death is necessary to that Unity.

So, primordial unity falls into a conscious struggle to realise itself, creating the polar opposites of light and darkness interpreted by us as good and evil, a cosmic battle inside and outside us permeating all creation. Plotinus, standing between visual Myth and discursive Reason summarises the story, “Even the less Good has its contributory value in the All. Contraries may co-operate; and without opposites there could be no ordered Universe; all living beings of the partial realm include contraries....Unity is built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from unity come back to unity by sheer need of nature; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but all is drawn into an organized system by the unity at the source...What we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light.The light is constant and unsevered. On the dissolution of the body, the light passes away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming” (Enneads).

The colour coding embedded in Myth, legend and fairy story is systematic, not random or ornamental, resembling the order of the spectrum and carefully placed to trigger associations or stages of psychic development. The so called three sacred colours of white/red/black are the three “threads of life” (gunas), woven together into a chord by The Hindu goddess of Fate, Prakriti. They represent youth, maturity, age. These three colours are connected constantly in the stories, mentioned in Isaiah and Ovid and throughout medieval literature, the coloured tents of Tamberlaine, the coloured knights of the Quest, the “blood-coloured snow that compels” Parsifal to his Ladylove. They are the colours of the changing metal in alchemy and they repeat like a refrain in the story of Snow White, her black hair, white skin and red lips.

Otherwise, Green has a special place in the stories. It’s the colour of Mercury, Hermes and Khdir who appear to guide the soul on its way towards transformation, usually at the approach to the heart/ centre. It’s in Gawain and the Green Knight, the green lion in alchemy. It’s the green light of fairyland, the “grass green samite cloak” in Parsifal, the sacred colour of Islam embodied in Mohammed’s cloak, entrusted with his innermost secrets to his “near ones” prior to death. It’s always the most magical and fascinating of the colours, holding our attention most, just as the scientists describe. Clearly, it’s always been known that colour activates certain states within the psyche, nothing occult about it, just common sense.

PSYCHOLOGY tells the story differently. Mystics and psychologists, both exploring the nature of Consciousness, often speak in terms of Light. The mystics of the Upanishads talk about “the brightly shining Self of Atman”, Corpus Hermeticum discusses “God as archetypal Light”, Jung says “in man there is an invisible sun, an inward Light”. Light is always associated with Consciousness and Ego, darkness with the Unconscious and Self. Whole areas of the personality “lie in the Shadow” waiting to be exposed by the Light, to be accepted and integrated or opposed and rejected.

Those working in depth analysis with the Individuation Process talk about “the light of conscious knowledge. Only in the light of consciousness can man know. This act of cognition, of conscious discrimination, sunders the world into opposites, for experience of the world is only possible through opposites, as seen in the motif of the hostile twins, the archetypes of self-division. The Light, symbol of consciousness and illumination, is the prime object of all” (Neumann).The healthy “integration of the personality” or Individuation Process of life is described as the interaction of Ego and Self, Consciousness and Unconsciousness from its initial unreflective wholeness, through division, to restored unity. This process is a movement towards the centre rather than any linear development and accompanied by a sense of Illumination or enlightenment, light as liberation and darkness as suppression or imprisonment. This centre is called the Undivided Self (Jung) or “Inner Controller” (Idries Shah), a place of Light and synthesis.

The psychologists’ research on the influence of colour on the psyche affirms the findings of scientists and myths. Jung makes reference to white/red/black in the Individuation process in the same order as the alchemists that he studied. He describes dark colours as “chthonic” and light colours as “aerial”. In his work on mandalas he describes red as the colour of blood and active, blue as the colour of spirit and reflective, and green as the colour of mediation, between the two. Red and blue signify the duality of existence, while green signifies the Inner Self mediating at the centre. This placement concurs with the scientists’ spectrum, with the seven Hindu Chakras or the seven colours of the seven stages of the soul in Islamic mysticism. All of them have the reds/orange at one lower earth end as active with the blue/violets at the other higher sky end as reflective, and in between the emerald green synthesis of the heart centre as mysterious and numinous where transformation is possible. This basic pattern remains constant, for as Najim Kobra says, “colour is not a passive impression, but the language of the soul to itself”. It’s an objective enduring reality of the universal Psyche and not subjective.

Some of the finest psychologists were early mystics and some of their paintings illustrate this story of Light and Colour in their practice. As the Hesychast monks of Greek/Russian Orthodoxy worked on their psyche they worked on their paintings and both were a precise science as much as revelation, influenced by the earlier Manichean tradition. Their icons represent the transformation of Matter via the illumination of intense concentration, creating a luminosity and vibrancy of colour that glows in the darkness. It is unmistakeable, found in the Cretan/Novgorod schools, the work of Theophanes the Greek, Rubliev and the countless Anonymous. So the inner illumination of the painter concentrates the visible illumination of the painting and this psychic/material intensity becomes One. It’s an alchemy where the Inside informs the Outside and transforms both.

The painter prepared the materials of his Being using techniques akin to Yoga as recorded in the Philokalia, while preparing the materials of his art, as recorded in the Dionysius fragment. This fragment proves their knowledge of the white Light Ray as “light penetrates matter to endow form”, their understanding of the properties of light and colour, of harmonies and discord, pigment vibrations that glow or recede, the psychological effect of colour, the balancing of complementary tones, especially reds, blues and greens. These pigment colours were considered sacred, often gathered with difficulty from rocks and plants, the rare lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, the powerful red vermilion of crushed beetles, the glowing whites and gold leaf. Their skies are often red or gold with the light ray descending visibly; their faces are lit by a light within without shadows. They are painting the outside according to the inside and their knowledge of the laws of colour and light was synonymous with their knowledge of the laws of Creation and Consciousness. So when Rubliev painted his Holy Trinity he was demonstrating this Unity of light and colour in the materials and in himself. It was practical, not speculative. They knew what science now knows, but spoke it in a different language.

SUMMARY

Behind the different languages of the story of Light and Colour is the universal Psyche. This Reality is the same, whether we talk in terms of a white light wave split into 7 colours, or a God of Light who completes Creation in 7 days, or an Inner Self/Light initiating 7 stages of development. It’s a display that dazzles and fascinates, this spectrum of Existence with its polarities and diversity, the struggle to orientate and know the source. We associate our sense of Good and Evil, Knowledge and Ignorance, from our sense of Light and Dark, feeling Good when connected to the Light and Bad if disconnected and “in the dark.” It’s in the fascination of candlelight in Lonelyville or moonlight in Amends or firelight in Self-made.

We belong to this Light Play and are intimately connected with it, setting our values by it. Our greatest fear is to be cut off from the Light and “cast asunder into an Outer Darkness” like Lucifer, the lightbearer and God’s lover, who rebelled and became unloved, isolated and disconnected. This place of separation is the dark hell of torment,”a weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12/25:30). It’s different from the darkness in the world, which is part of the Light and part of our struggle, known to us and experienced. It is absence and nothingness, where we cease to be, our negation. We only know this Outer Darkness by our fear of it, that fear of the unknown that the horror story amplifies or religion presents in afterlives, something alluded to beyond , but any portrayal of it never matches the fear of it as we cling to the Light.

“In the Light of Understanding...
We see things in their true colours....
We see the light....."

These daily expressions are residual reminders from ourselves of that story of Light and Colour.
__________________________

Alhambra preview -2010

2010-12-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

Here is a preview of the lower middle section of my Alhambra Quintych,just completed, though it may be adjusted later.Double click to enlarge.

Recipe for an Icon

2010-11-20T23:30:00.001-08:00

I think painting is a form of cooking and would see the origins of those two arts together.I discovered this connection from learning the craft of icon painting where natural pure pigment is used with eggs and cooked gelatine.A good painting is like a good feast,a feast for the eyes, not a mental exercise.Art might have got highjacked and diverted by men who want to elevate it into mental consumption and display...but you have to get your hands dirty to realise its about mixing ingredients. So here is my recipe for making an icon.

RECIPE FOR A SMALL ICON IN EGG TEMPERA
Makes 1

Ingredients:
Planed wooden panel 12inch by 9inch
2 pkt edible gelatine (1/3 oz each)
4lb bag white whiting (like powdered chalk)

Range of pure pigment powder
Small brushes 0-5 for detail
8-15 brush for background
Egg yolks, separated but not stirred
Water

Method for Gesso Board:
1) Place one measure of gelatine to 7water in saucepan and heat slowly til dissolved. Stir continuously but do not boil.
2) Brush glue solution over wooden panel, front and back. Leave to dry (2hrs)
3) Prepare more gelatine solution, this time 1:12 water. Remove from heat.
4) Add 2 measures of sieved whiting powder gradually to 1 measure of gelatine solution (use drinking glass as measure). Mix slowly to avoid lumps. Mixture should resemble single cream. This mixture is called gesso.
5) Brush gesso onto prepared board, back, front and sides with decorating brush. Leave to dry 1hr). Apply 12 more coats thinly.
6) After 3hours sand down final layer with sand paper until smooth as glass.
7) Incise your drawing outline into the gesso board with a sharp instrument like a compass point. Incisions should be about 1/3rd mm deep. These are guidelines.

Method for Egg Tempera Paint Layers:
1) Stage one or background colour (“petit lac”/little lake). The measure of egg yolk to water is 1:12,very runny. Mix to pigment gradually. Flood the gessoed panel, using 15brush. Puddles of paint will gradually sink into the gesso evenly (10minutes).
2) Stage 2/3 or successive layers of colour. Proportion of egg yolk to water is 1:6.
3) Nourishing layer. Use egg yolk/water mix of 1:12 and no pigment. Apply with 15brush over whole painting to unify the layers of colour.
4) Stage 4 of final colour layer. Use concentrated egg/water solution of 1:3 and add pigment. Use 000,00 or 1 brushes. Highlights need 1:1 egg/water solution. Add drop of vinegar to solution to preserve colour for up to 5days before egg goes off. (Phew!). Always store in fridge.
5) Finish with a nourishing layer (as for point 3) to bind layers of colour together. Varnish is optional.
6) The method of colour is from dark to light, and from background to foreground.
7) DO NOT EAT!

Moghul Art

2010-11-08T01:05:00.001-08:00

(attributed to Basavana)

(from an Indian restaurant)

While I have a moment waiting for daylight so I can carry on painting, and because I am disinclined to dust the house, let me share one of my other passions here; Moghul Art.

I discovered Moghul Art on the walls of an Indian restaurant in the curry houses of Club Row in London. I like art that catches you unawares as you eat or as you live or as you celebrate; art that is anonymous and in passing and easily missed, not the demonstrative kind in museums and galleries and art schools where signatures affirm their existent Selves, saying “look at me”.

This art you find in caves or the street or even TV shows…and once I found it in a mausoleum in Cairo where an artist, whose name I cant even remember, was buried amongst his works. (The Egyptians have an integrated understanding of life and death and even live in their cemeteries.)

Moghul Art is anonymous with its roots in the Manichean art of Persia (2/3rd Century) and influences from Byzantine iconography. For instance, the halo, or glow around heads, was first used in Manichean art with its emphasis on Light.

The moghul emperor, Akbar (16th century), created a progressive syncretic court where painters from all over the known world could exchange ideas freely, an environment not unlike that of 14th Century Granada when Mohammed V rolled up his sleeves to build The Alhambra, palaces whose architecture later influenced the Taj Mahal. Back and forth it goes in time and place, islands of illumination.

The results were stunning, in particular the painted miniatures in the Hamzanama manuscripts. Here you can sometimes see the Byzantine influence on the painting of trees and mountains. The work attributed to Banavari, Basavari, Mukhilis and Dasavanta have taught me a lot, though it’s the survival of the painting, not the name that matters. Its the detail of their buildings using multiple perspective, and the movement in their landscapes that interest me. They knew their subject matter with contemplative intimacy and that’s a method I understand, though I realize slow contemplative thought is not popular or valued in a world of fast competitive thought. Different thought processes produce different worlds. One rises, the other falls. Back and forth it goes on the seesaw in the playground.

And now its daylight. I must go and paint….

Cave Paintings in Words and Pictures 1

2010-10-18T02:12:00.005-07:00

Recent publicity about Herzog’s Chauvet film has concentrated my own thoughts on Lascaux. I dont know what he’s going to say but I’ve always known why these cave paintings matter to me.

Creation and Consciousness

The oldest story ever told is the one we are still obsessively telling 30,000 years after it first appeared on the cave walls of Lascaux in France. We embellish it according to the tastes of history and culture, but it never changes because it is the imagery of a universal Psyche conscious of itself. We dont invent or own this story because it can’t help but be told the moment we are conscious and if it isn’t told we cease to be. It is the Creation Story, outside and inside, and all we can do is recognise it and tell it to the best of our ability.

For those cave people, the Creation Story is about vibrant animals that move, because that was their world. They chose a subterranean cave system with a morphology that was integral to the telling, suggesting a difficult descent into chambers and tunnels that portray the interior vulvic landscape of Birth, an Earth Womb with warm moist glistening folds of rock reminiscent of the female genital system and the process of birth – labial or vaginal formations, yoni keyhole passages, fissures and openings that lead onwards into the inaccessible dark spaces of primordial existence. As we descend into this underworld we retrace our Origins and our consciousness alters.

At this point, in this hole of origins, the animals come teeming and tumbling over themselves, effortlessly, and in a riot of creation, all shapes and sizes in all directions and in all artistic styles, moving across the walls in a noisy commotion, animated and alive and alert, some looking out at us, possessed by the same consciousness that possessed their makers and me.

The upside down horse emerges from this birth canal, curving round the rock, struggling to get out. Aurochs and pregnant horses, cows and deer cross the cave – all full of movement and energy, this life force and exuberance. At one labial outcrop five half formed deer seem to be swimming in water; the surge of breaking waters or The Flood of Origins. This is Life and water and birth. Its also eschatology and death as the animals are sucked back into their Origins.

These animals are not in danger, not being hunted, nor are they fixed in any landscape. They are just full of the impact of pure Existence and consciously Alive. They are drawn close together but they dont see each other or relate or interact. They float in space, strangely empowered. Some are perfectly proportioned while others are distorted with missing vital parts. Some are finely detailed or modelled and shaded in deliberate earth colours. Others are roughly sketched in monotones. Some are obliviously painted over others. Some bend round to include the rock formations that suggest their shape. Others overlap as multiples moving together, while others stand in the magnetic tension of opposites, facing each other or pulling apart.

This is all inclusive creation with all artistic styles represented; realism and abstraction, naive and sophisticated, sculpted and expressionist. The figures demonstrate all perspectives; frontal and side view, flat and foreshortened, from above and below, even x-ray and what is now called cubism. No wonder modern artists used them to challenge conventions. Everything ever possible is here in this moment. It is all Existence, joyful, the impulse of Life, without judgement and before Reason. ....and frightening because of its energy.

I am in awe of such awareness and skill. We fade in arrogance beside it with our pompous sense of progressive development. Out of this confusion and cacophony and chaos is the Order of Creation as its always been known. The animals burst out of nothing. They are. Then they are not and the caves are silent. It’s simple, this watery subterranean landscape of birth and animals, the conscious imagery of Creation.

They are painted extrovertly, but there is another part to this story that is more intimate and quietly hidden on the back wall of an inaccessible chamber at the bottom of a shaft; a mysterious scene about regulating the rhythms of Life. Sequential dots mark the spot ( : : : ).

This scene shows a naively drawn stick man with the head of a bird and outstretched arms as if flying. He is potent and confident, Ithyphalic man with erect penis and puffed out chest, valiant and defiant yet strangely pathetic and vulnerable. Its a figure that brings opposites together, fearless and frail, the potent physical erect qualities of manhood with the otherworldy or spiritual qualities of a godlike being who flies. So he soars upwards into the unknown in a state of elation, inspired and ascending.

These are qualities we associate with the hero archetype. Then he appeared as a shamanic figure but the same form repeats itself according to the culture it inhabits....knights and cops, soldiers and Sufis, priests and modern therapists; the fighters and originators of Thought and Deed, Rejuvenators who separate as Individuals from the crowd,Self-sacrificing .

The bird imagery denoting flight has always been associated with soul and spirituality and ascent, as it is here. Its in the Egyptian hieroglyph for Ba/ Soul and its in the imagery of the Psyche/Soul used in modern Depth Psychology. Raised arms of ascent signify goddesses like Astarte, the yogi’s stance for prayer to the sun, the catholic priest whose flying arms reach out at Mass to encircle the “flock”, the prostrations of a Muslim at prayer. The gesture opens us up to the sky, to something above us where angels always have wings. It’s another world, an altered state of consciousness, a soul-consciousness. It’s inspirational.

Physically potent Ithyphalic man is later found in hieroglyphs as Min or Osiris (“the mummy with the long member”), or the Welsh hero Peredur who then becomes Persival, a name with sexual connotations that means “to pierce or lance through the valley”. The erect penis suggests a state of high alert, an arousal and excitement or elation. It’s about the invigorating male creative energy that fertilises. Arousal contributes to creation in all its acts, including the act of creativity in the arts, and physical potency is just as important for the hero as any winged consciousness. We diminish it when we just see it as male muscle or prowess.It is so much more.

Here in these caves they knew exactly what they were painting. Below the stick man is another bird on the end of a stick. A lanced line that might be a spear or a line of direction leads to a huge female bison with its tail raised in excitement and something which might be placenta or entrails hanging from its stomach. The bisons head bows down to almost touch the man and the expression on its face is extraordinary. There is no aggression in their relationship. The spear connects more than it kills. It is combat but it is also embrace.

These figures are connected in positions that suggest birth and death together; transformation. The man is flying as much as he is dying, rejuvenated. The bison seems transfixed. They are positioned carefully in a geometric formation I’ve seen on Pictish Stones in Scotland, within a space made by two angled lines capped by a crescent. There its called “the crescent and V rod” symbol interpreted as a sign of empowerment, the v rods being water divining rods held at an angle to each other. The later addition of a rhinoceros also has a raised tail, perhaps chosen because it was an unusual first sighted animal that seemed remarkable in its creation.

This cave scene symbolises empowerment too and may well have been divined to place here. Body and Spirit, birth and death, heroic manchild and Mother Nature in the form of bison...they form a balanced unity here in this scene, suspended in time and beautifully equipoised.

The same scene reappears in medieval icons as St George and the dragon. The hero is now riding his altered consciousness on horseback with his lance holding the dragon. The dragon bends to face the man. His soaring consciousness rides high as he pins down the dragon. There is no animosity or conquest between them, just this strange look.

What is this “Look”? Its on the bisons face and on other animals in other cave paintings, timeless and penetrating and compassionate, a look of heightened consciousness that stares out from the painting and reaches deep into the onlooker. I’ve seen it also in Byzantine icons and in the Fayoum Portraits of Egypt. Its mentioned as “the gaze” in sufi poetry. It appears again in the painting of ten sages on the walls of the Alhambra in Spain. This look is directly communicating the state of consciousness that is being depicted. It is Being contemplating itself in the being who observes. It arrests your attention. You feel it. You know it. It reaches into your own consciousness to recognise itself....or not, if the onlooker is not receptive.

The hero’s story has been externalised into ceremonial epic tales that follow coded patterns, Gilgamesh is one of the earliest recorded, and Greek tragedies are some of the earliest performed. But it has also been internalised into the language of modern depth psychology where soul becomes Psyche and the shaman becomes a therapist, where the Unknown becomes the Unconscious, and the perilous horizontal journey becomes vertical. This Individuation Process is not new, and was similarly practiced by medieval Heychast mystics and Muslim sufis. The hero is Son Ego Consciousness locked in a battle with its greater Mother Self Unconscious as it struggles to detach from that on which it is also dependent. Its a struggle for balance and unity and harmony where neither Ego nor Self destroy each other, for the hero attempts to balance the outside with the inside, in the meaning of the hermetic maxim, “As above, so below”.

This secret shaft scene of empowerment shows a man in that heroic state, taking his place with Nature, a man who harmonises the opposites of Consciousness (Dualities) in himself and in the world, striving to regulate and balance and serve in accordance with natural laws. Its not about winning or conquering. Its about sacrifice and unity and inclusion, whatever the danger. It requires a hero’s consciousness to harmonise these forces,to enter into the unknown knowingly.

This recurring imagery is in the plays of Shakespeare when Renaissance Ideals generated humanism, in the Irish Neolithic earth mound of Newgrange, where the triple spiral geometric motif of balance is similarly hidden on the back wall of a womblike chamber at the end of a narrow birth passage. Its in the earliest writings of the Upanishads, and in the European medieval morality plays, psychomachys where Everyman battles with the duality of conscious existence towards an ideal unity. So the same story is being reinterpreted in different languages, whether it be the language of science or religion or psycho-therapy or Art. Its a universal psychic Truth beyond time and space, telling its own story, reflecting itself.

These paintings were made in a state of creativity that is part of that same story too. The creative act is us at our most alive, often overwhelming and all consuming. It drives artists to extraordinary achievements as they battle the unknown source, pinning down their thoughts with lancelike precision to stabilise into an Artform before it all slips away or overwhelms. That’s a heroic process, whatever the gender.

The most powerful force we know is the generative principle of Life and its natural rhythms. That force flows all around us and in us, made conscious in the imagery of our stories of Origin and in our stories of the human heroic endeavour to help regulate those Life rhythms. These stories are our manual or guidebook. Its a natural Law and Order, not manmade.

For Consciousness IS the Origin of the images we generate. The outer world of Creation and the inner world of Consciousness are the same generative process of “bringing things to Light”, “to Be”. They are the same thing and there are times when expressing one also expresses the other, when the visible World alters through the conscious “gaze” as it develops.

Our human story is not about the progress of knowledge, but about its recovery. These cave people knew as much as we know, living within the constraints of their own technology as we do now. Their paintings are a celebration of Creation as generative power; they show us the creation of the natural world, the creation of the human heroic animating principle that helps regulate the rhythms of Life, and the marks of the artists who painted them out of that same principle of creativity. They are imbued with the wonder of Life.

Alternatively, as my daughter says in her own creative way and with pin point precision lest I seem a little out of balance, “Its like this Mammy, the man got turned on by a cow before it head butted him into the air”.

(the mysterious shaft scene)

Cave Paintings in Words and Pictures 2

2010-10-18T01:54:00.000-07:00

These pictures accompany the essay on cave paintings. They show the swimming deer in labial landscape,the teeming animals and keyhole passage,the horse clambering out of hole of Origins.

Timeless Moments

2010-10-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend we buried my father- in -law on a warm wet hillside in Ireland, huddled under umbrellas, moving as One in this ceremony of Remembrance, this last - long - walk sounding the death – knell – bell.

He was buried as he lived, surrounded by music, a man who belonged to the show band era at a time when men made music but no money. Rather, they knew the real meaning of music. So we followed the jaunty macabre “New Orleans” jazz band as they played “Summertime” and “When the Saints go marching in”, swaying to the beat. At the graveside a solitary fiddler played “The Coolin” as the coffin lowered to sobbing refrain. Haunting and frail and defiant, fingers wind around the notes.

“The Coolin” is an old Irish lament first mentioned 200years ago at the Belfast Harp Gathering where it was played by harpists. A woman sings it to her lover, saying she prefers the coolin hairstyle. It’s a disguised rebel song too, because the coolin hairstyle was that worn by the Druids, the Celtic chieftains and the original Celtic Christian monks before Catholicism came to Ireland. The hairline is shaved back to behind the ears and the hair is worn in long curly locks down the back. It was a mark of defiance .This man buried today was a non conformist too.

In the funeral mass a tenor sang “Somewhere my Love”, Laras Theme from the film, Doctor Zavago. It was a favourite tune between him and his wife. And, proving that some things survive the grave, Jessica sang an Irish shanos, Suil Na Ruin, to the accompaniment of Sophy on the harp, two of his grand children.The music went on long into the night. Loss and Love and Song. He passes on and passes on the music.

In mythical ceremonies like this there is a bigger picture. In this moment I remember the true meaning of “Al-lah”, a meaning beyond any religion. “Al-lah” means “The Real”, an interpretation of which means the awareness of a “Unity” beyond individual existence, that Greater Unity in which we play our part, and of which we catch occasional glimpses….as I do now burying this man in the ground and into memory.

Fields of the Nephilim in performance 1987

2010-09-22T00:04:00.000-07:00

I know the state of mind of those who painted the lions in Chauvet by the state of mind in which this was painted in 1987,long before I saw the Chauvet cave paintings.

The Lions at Chauvet

2010-09-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

The power is not in the animal but in the composition and intent.

Chauvet Cave Paintings

2010-09-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

I am spilling over with excitement.The French government allowed Werner Herzog to film the paintings in the Chauvet Caves and his documentary previewed at Toronto this week.These paintings are extraordinary and have been my passion for some time.I have been to Lascaux and Niaux in France, but Chauvet is closed to the public, so this is the only chance to see them in 3D.What a gift!

"Caves of forgotten Dreams" will be shown in cinema 3D next year ,on the History channel in America, and on More 4, the Channel 4 series of "True Stories".

These paintings are over 30,000 years old but could have been painted yesterday. Its not about artistic technique or commercial value or public consumption. Chauvet was a hidden place then as it is now, for this is a different sort of Art that is instant,without any sense of development despite the fact it covers periods of thousands of years with different populations.Its proof of something timeless to do with the myth of Creation and the birth of Consciousness, or what some call Soul.Creation and Consciousness are the same thing connecting outward with inward; an explosion of Light.Such a mystery, and here is its earliest record,proof that we were wide awake and expressing it then as we do now.

Its the timeless human psyche we are looking at on these cave walls,for we are the same thing reflecting and unchanged ,despite our illusion of sophistication and history.

Encounters. Dresden. August 2010

2010-08-25T12:48:00.001-07:00

We encountered this street musician in Cossack costume by the banks of the River Elbe in Dresden, the East German city 30miles from the Czechoslovakian border, a city reminding me of all those black and white Cold War spy films watched as a child on Sunday matinee television, films like Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” filmed in the ruins of post war Vienna (1949), tales of love and intrigue, separation and reunion. Here then is the new old city of Dresden once burnt to the ground, now rising up again into baroque alternations of black and white stone.

This man plays the Ukrainian bandura, an instrument related to harp/lute/torban/zither, probably of Byzantine origin where it appears on 10C frescoes. (Remember the zither music from “The Third Man”?).Like the harp its an instrument that spans both classical and folk traditions, so where as this man plays in the street, in 16C Saxony the bandurist was also found playing at court as the King’s chess companion and royal bard….much like the Celtic harpists of Old Ireland. For music sits close to governance with its sense of harmonies and balance.

There is power in this music, strange enticing cadences in descending minor scales accompanied by a recitative voice that is barely audible(to the ear anyway), tales of love and intrigue, separation and reunion. It seems to come from deep inside, soul songs that trickle out their lifeblood onto busy oblivious streets. We were compelled to stop and listen.

Subsequently I found him named as Ostap Kindraczuk on several internet sites including Youtube and the Wikipedia entry for Cossacks. He seems to be a wandering minstrel through Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Serbia and now East Germany. So lucky to find him in Dresden, perhaps inevitable.

Listen to him yourself. You can find him on Youtube under Ukranian Bard in Krakow by mortimerburns. Part 2 is best because the camera follows the sound winding through the crowd before you see him, much as it happened to us that day as he hooked us in.

Modern icon of St George and the Dragon 1991

2010-07-30T03:11:00.000-07:00

Men and women may have different weapons at their disposal,but its Love that holds the dragon.Thats always been the concept of this icon since its early christian origins.So you find no aggression in this picture,only an attempt to harmonise existing forces.

Its also a concept within the first seven seasons of a cop show called Law and Order Criminal Intent (LOCI) .You see it best defined in the arias at the end of two episodes,one called "Want",the other called "Blind Spot". Beautiful. Thats what made it different and enigmatic for a while.After Season 7 the original writers had all left and the concept dissipated.

________________________________________
WHEN A COP SHOW IS MORE THAN A COP SHOW
Published in The Friend, 20th January 2006,from a longer study written in 2005.

Television is a much-maligned medium. You might not know of the American drama Law and Order; Criminal Intent (LOCI) currently showing on Hallmark, Sky One and Channel Five. However, if you do watch it, pay attention to its underlying concepts, some of which are surprisingly close to Quaker values.

This programme recognises the power of faith as a prime human motivator, not just the Faith of major religions, but also the faith people put in each other, and above all the faith of Goren, the softly spoken detective who never fires a gun and whose sympathies are with passive resistance. As he traverses the Wasteland of New York and the derangement of its inhabitants he is upheld by a steadfast faith in the Spirit of Good in the human condition, that hidden spark, what he calls ‘the sparkling girl’. He reaches out to this in the most unlikely of criminals, like Tagman, the serial killer in ‘Want’, for whom he pleads against the death penalty: “Your loneliness is so deep, you can’t help but do this again, because you needed to be connected. You’re always going to look for that connection. Take responsibility. This will never stop until you take responsibility,” Goren tells him.

What concerns Goren is that people remain engaged in the struggle for Good, however fallible, erroneous or maladjusted their efforts. Those who give up and become disaffected, disinterested or isolated, like Widlock in’ Magnificat’, are seen as the real criminals, whether they commit a crime or not. These characters most test Goren’s faith in the Good of the human spirit because he is about saving souls as well as solving crimes.

Good has a practical significance in LOCI, it’s not a lofty abstract, so its concerned with people living the Good life, straight and true, doing the right thing, recognising who they are honestly, like Wallace at the end of’ Grow’. The other way is to live a crooked life, self-deluding and wronging others. Also the passions and appetites that can lead to horrendous crimes, like the loneliness of Tagman, are shown as common to us all, not an aberration. For human fulfilment is shown as dependent upon making significant connections with others. The most damaged or evil characters are seen as those who fail to connect, become isolated or dehumanised.

Compassion is the key to Goren’s detection. When Evil feels loved it can be diffused or transformed because it feels included, not threatened. Without compassion Evil can only be imprisoned or exiled. A sound society is dependent on acknowledging and including its own evils, as a sound personality needs to accept and integrate its dark side. Otherwise Evil remains dangerous, in opposition or underground.

This is a mystery the old storytellers knew when they showed the dragons and monsters being overcome by an attitude of Mind (Knight) in a warfare (Quest) of the Soul (Wasteland). In the icons or St.George slaying the dragon, his expression is one of Love, not aggression. Likewise the dragon bends to surrender freely. Their battle is a mutual engagement. In the same way Goren’s style of interrogation is an act of Love, often a seduction (Wallace in’ Antithesis’/Tagman in ‘Want’). It is unprecedented to find a cop show not centred on aggression and a detective who acts more like a suitor than a policeman.

So it seems to me there are themes in LOCI close to Quakerly concerns; Goren’s faith in the Good in everyone and his compassion towards those who others regard as unforgivably Evil; the focus on good practice in Life, on how we connect truthfully with others; the depiction of real Evil as the brutalisation of our Humanity. What appears to be just an entertaining American cop show is, in fact, an understanding enquiry into the human condition, and certainly worth watching.

Sophy Sofia 1994-2010

2010-07-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

Painted 1995
With flute 2010

Jessica Nell 1998-2010

2010-07-11T08:50:00.005-07:00

Painted 1999
Singing 2010

whiteboards

2010-05-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

Quintych on The Alhambra.
This is a work in progress,just whitewashed and grided the wooden boards.
This is how they lay out.

The River

2010-05-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

Looking back upriver to Grantchester from the crack willow meadows.

People,pubs and pints. 1988

2010-05-04T02:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a puzzle for you to cut out and put together.
Its a large wall painting in sections on wood.
altogether it measures 3foot high by 14foot long.

Part 1. Two end pieces. 3ft by 18 inches.

Part 2. Middle right section. 3ft by 3ft

Part 3. Middle left section. 3ft by 3ft

Part 4. The middle section. 3ft by 5ft.

Icon of Saint Catherine 1991

2010-04-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

This is my Icon of Saint Catherine.It now hangs in the library of a girls Public School in UK.She is an interesting saint because she never existed ,yet she is one of the most popular saints.Its an example of the power of archetype over personal existence, for she embodies the same properties as Sophia or Sheba or isis, stretching backward and forward in Time.Wisdom is woman in form as Justice is Juno,for as Ibn Arabi concludes,nothing is complete except through the feminine,something well understood by men who are creative and by modern psychology - See Erich Neumann "Art and the Creative Unconscious."

She was tortured for her non conformity since she was a danger to the church,able to confound the traditional church with her power of argument,something that was unacceptable in a woman.

Her name is linked to the "cathari", a Greek convent of nuns in Sinai, and to the heretical "Cathari" who were persecuted in southern France for deifying her.She is also famous for the firework, the catherine wheel,the instrument of her torture, a wheel of fire on which she was tortured.

This belief in her demonstrates the eternal human hope for the endurence of free thought.Thats why she is revered in a Girls Public School,for whom she is its patron saint.

Hypatia, of course, did exist in that region, an Alexandrian Neoplatonist intellectual who was persecuted,murdered and burnt by the early 5th Century christian church.Her death signified the suppression of the free flow of knowledge between West and East, an intellectual schism. Free thought went underground and only emerged again as christianity loosened its grip.However knowledge was still encouraged by early Islam which is why Ibn Arabi is so important to the contemporary world.For instance the word "archetype" in modern usage goes back to Ibn Arabi.

The Last Supper 1982

2010-02-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

This is fun, an early painting, very basic, struggling to find its form.How to make the pigment move, not technically but emotionally.You see me struggling with this alot.

At the time I was training in Social Work and working with teenagers, mostly boys, on a project that was set up as an experimental non-custodial sentence to borstal. In fact the recidivist rates are no different, but it is less expensive and perhaps it gives some boys a chance to escape the life patterns that confine them while contributing to the community in some way.

We were living in the wilds of Norfolk , building a log cabin that would be used as a community resource for other deprived/depraved children so it was useful work, learning about physical and social survival much as they now do in Reality TV shows! Maybe that’s where the idea originated.The cabin was built. The kitty was stolen. The toilets didn’t work. It was cold. There were arguments and knife fights, tears and tantrums. Life stories were told and vulnerabilities shared. These boys were old before they were young.

Anyway here we are sharing our Last Supper together like a regrouping of the famous Leonardo painting! Follow the links in the lines round the table, each telling their own story. The window opens out onto their nightmares. And round the outside is the frieze that tells the whole story of the project; sitting together round the fire, swimming in the sea, mooning on the scaffolding, the chequer tiled floor of the courtroom, football, breakthrough eureka moments, playing pool in the local pub.

The Runners 1981

2010-01-10T04:09:00.000-08:00

Epiphany = meaningful moments.

We just celebrated Little Christmas or Womens Christmas here in Ireland on January 6th,in remembrance of the Celtic Church which would have celebrated Christmas day on January 6th in accordance with all the Eastern Christian churches.Traditionally its a day of rest for the women.January 6th is now called the Feast of Epiphany or Kings Day or Twelfth Night. Its celebrated right across Europe and especially in Mediterranean countries, and Ive always thought the west of Ireland was a displaced Mediterranean culture, not nordic.As the christian church moved northwards it needed to take over the competition of local festivals like the winter solstice on December 21st.

Anyway the feast day reminded me of the importance of epiphanies, and of this painting in particular, which is called "The Runners".

That year my brothers were running in the National Cross Country Championships on Hampstead Heath in London. One brother is very focused on winning and in the fray, the other is more nonchalant about it, on the edge. I noticed the photographer at his vantage point behind the tree, observing the runners from behind as they advanced away from him. On the left a woman watches with her two children swinging around her much like the runners swinging round the tree. Perhaps she knew someone in the race too. Above her the kite flies free to observe while the ground swirls with the movement of the runners. The tree seems to point the way. The sky broods. And later I paint these observations. I was exhilarated by the unity of what I observed with myself participating. Sometimes you want to catch that moment and express it.

This was my second painting so the technique is very basic because I didn’t understand paint properties. So in a way I was running too, trying to catch up with my comprehension! I think Im still in that race.

Icon of Mother and Child,1988

2009-12-18T05:48:00.000-08:00

This is my version of the Mother and Child Icon.

Around December 21st, at the low point of the turning year it’s the birth of the fragile sun and the birth of the heroic Christ child . In both cases that emerging energy will be enfolded by the recipient in a bond that is miraculous.

So in Newgrange Mound, near Dublin, for about five days, the feeble morning sun enters the passage and creeps slowly up to the womblike chamber where it hits the triple spiral marked on the back wall, as it has done for 5000 years ,the oldest record of its type, replicated all over the world in similar dated mid-winter monuments .

In their own way, the Christian icons of Mother and Child mark this same moment of hope and fruitfulness, traceable to an earlier Egyptian image of the boy king sitting on the lap or throne of the Goddess, Isis. This is her crowning moment as she enables him to life; birth of the sun child, the christ child.

Traditionally there are three prototypes for this Icon; firstly, the Virgin Orans, of the Sign, 4th century Rome, where the Mother‘s arms are raised around the child sitting in a sphere at her centre, cosmic and geometric; secondly ,the Virgin Hodigitria which shows the Mother as Theotokos, the god-bearer, holding her son in her left arm whilst pointing to him with her right hand.,Byzantine,5th century, a majestic investiture ; and thirdly, the Virgin Eleousa, which means merciful loving kindness where the mother proudly holds her son but the haunting expression in her face foretells his fate,Constantinople,11th century, personal and emotional .Its the Cretan variation of Eleousa that is represented in Catholic homes as Virgin of Vladimir, of the Passion or Perpetual Succour .It focuses on the relationship between Mother and Child as they embrace each other tenderly or playfully, and on the expression of the Mothers face as she expresses both love and sorrow. The Icon prototype develops from something general and schematic to something particular and intimate.

As Queen of Heaven, the three gold stars on the Mothers dark red life-blooded robe symbolize her triple aspect as a maiden, mother and crone, a triple aspect universally associated with Goddess figures, which appropriately brings us back full-circle to the triple spiral at Newgrange.

I suppose my icon belongs to the Eleousa type, though there are differences. The Mothers robe is green and her expression suggests the twist of contradictory emotions, exhilaration and horror .Likewise, the child is both miracle and monster since what seems one to some is another to others, and because the reality of birth is not an ideal, the ideal that male iconographers might paint with their abstract reasoning. Mother and child are encased in the blue background teardrop shape that suggests their destiny together.

There are no new stories, just a re-telling of the old ones in new languages, and this is my re-telling.Happy Christmas Solstice.

Walking the Dog 2001

2009-11-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

All seasons present in the connection of walking the dog.

Checkmate 1990

2009-11-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

This was painted after camping at Uig bay,Lewis,Outer Hebrides,way out in the Atlantic off Northern Scotland,where the Lewis Chess pieces were discovered. The chess pieces are medieval,probably Norse, carved out of walrus ivory,some painted red, the others left white.

I like them because the movement of the lines etched into the ivory and the faces staring out trancelike remind me of early icons.I also like them because there is a sense of humour in them that undermines their competitive purpose. The knights sit on tiny shetland ponies instead of spirited horses. Some of the rooks are biting their shields and not heroic.The King is immobile with tiny feet peeping out beneath his robes.The Queen has one hand up to her cheek and the other holds a horn,perhaps a drinking vessel like the cornucopia.

There is a sense of mutual partnership in this painting of checkmate with weapons drawn.

That year I was in Lewis to see a band called the Cult play.Boatloads of black dressed goths and punks with mohecan haircuts arrived to find accommodation with elderly islanders.It was like another game of chess with two extremes meeting.

Camping under stars in Sinai Desert

2009-10-17T04:09:00.000-07:00

Three Western women and three Bedouin men camping in the Sinai desert, learning from each other, without fear and without prejudice, without harm, without end...

Fields of the Nephilim (1987, I think!)

2009-10-09T03:27:00.000-07:00

A goth rock band I knew from the 80's.

Painting is a solitary concentration, accompanied only by this rage to know.
"Rage,rage against the dying of the light" (Dylan Thomas).

Another boat

2009-08-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

Seven men rowing a boat. Do you see?
A variation of this can be found in the decoration of the walls in The Alhambra Palace, Granada,Spain. There its in the Maghrib script,translation "All that is, is All".

Spot No Difference

2009-08-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

There is no difference between these pictures, though 20,000 years of culture separate them.
The first is a photo for National Geographic magazine by Steve McCurry.The second is in Grotte de Niaux, Salon Noir in France.
Beautiful,huh?

Boats and a Song

2009-08-28T02:03:00.000-07:00

Best preserved boat is the sun-boat of the solar hero,buried next to the pyramids in Egypt and depicted in the tomb hieroglyphs

So sing if you know this song..

"Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream."

Playing : August 2009

2009-08-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

Caught on camera whilst playing with the children!

Irish Pub Songs 1994

2009-08-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like impromptu fireside pub singing in the depths of winter in Ireland. Not sure what the cat thought of it though. I think its trying to get out of the painting.

Icon of The Trinity,1992

2009-08-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

This is painted in the fashion of the Russian iconographer,Rubliev, 15C.
It took me a while to work out how he was using the layers of paint to bring out the luminous effect. His painting is a system of colour and shape by which he is talking about the mystery of the trinity to people who could not read. Its an interesting effect, from a secular point of view.

Icon painting 1992

2009-08-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

This was painted for an icon exhibition held in 1992. It was bought by a monk and now hangs in Glenstal Abbey,Ireland. Its in the Byzantine style,Glykophilousa or playful/loving pose.The medium is egg tempera (pure pigment mixed with varying quantities of egg yolk). The lines of the icon are etched into layers of gesso on wood.

Irish Trilogy - Number Three - School on the Hill - Dancing

2009-06-01T02:32:00.000-07:00

(2006). This is the last painting in the trilogy. You can see the pagan "Holy well" behind the school and the celtic crosses of the graveyard.Dance costumes denote dance schools and this dance teacher needed a cigarette!The girls move as one multiple figured formation.Everything in the picture is dancing to the music. Can you hear it?

Irish Trilogy - Number Two - The Hurling Field : Playing

2009-06-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

( 2005) This is the second painting in the trilogy,an Irish sport played in every village in Ireland,very tribal. We move to rhythms that can be observed.Here its a pyramid of men reaching for the ball. The two figures behind the wall have found a way to watch without paying entrance fee.(double click to enlarge)

Irish Trilogy- Number One,Village Post office : Talking

2009-06-01T01:59:00.000-07:00

First day of summer today.
First painting in an Irish trilogy (2003)
The post office is the centre of village life in Ireland,even the breadman delivers here.Its where all the village news is posted. Here the inside is opened up to be outside.

Count the legs on the group of girls in school uniform!
Spot the kitten!
Something unspoken is going on between the breadman and the postwoman,an attraction of sorts.
(double click on pictures for enlargements)

Girl on a Ceramic Toilet (2003)

2009-05-01T02:06:00.000-07:00

- with cross reference to Vermeer ( Girl with a Pearl Earring ) and Bunuel ( The Phantom of Liberty )-

Why are toilets usually small hidden rooms without a view, without a window or with frosted panes? Why are they buried in bedrooms and called "en suite" to add value to a house?

Its absurd. They should anable epiphanies that add value to our thinking.
Our toilet is centre space,proud and prominent with panoramic views.

First to Last

2009-03-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

This is the first painting I ever did in 1980.It’s called “London Market.

I met a man whose two boys wanted their brown-paper kites painted before flying them. Afterwards, the man said, why don’t you paint a proper picture? I had never painted anything before but the idea resonated, as if I’d been doing it for years. I knew instinctively what to do, without reference to any art. I wanted to paint a London market so I took some photos, too embarrassed to stand and sketch since I didn’t know if I could sketch. I observed the people, their relationships and activities, the shapes they formed, the colours etc, the knowledge they allowed me of themselves. That’s something I’ve always done for I love the formations that people make as they move to and fro in a crowd, the rhythms and interlace, how our inner lives are expressed outwardly.

I knew I wanted to paint straight onto wood so I would have to whitewash it. It would have to be right the first time, not reworked, because the energy of first time lines is fresh and alive, suggesting movement. I plotted the basic composition on paper quarter size, then gridded it onto the wooden board, adding and connecting the details, noisy areas and quiet areas, full of colour and drained of colour, the yielding contours of bodies and the rigid lines of buildings, the street receding and the sky advancing, the central hook of the street lamp with the tramp at its base. I didn’t know much about mixing paint or techniques. But I wanted the picture to tell its story in the lines and colours and shapes and I didn’t want it framed, but simple and direct in every sense, so that the viewer is not observing it as through a window passively, but actively engaging with it.

Afterwards the man said, why don’t you enter it in this national competition? So I did, transporting it on my head, 4ft by 3ft, through the London streets. The people receiving entries smiled with amusement when they saw it and I smiled back in acquiescence, for my painting did seem childish compared to the others. Sometime later they contacted me as one of those chosen to be exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall in central London. We went up to see it hanging with the other 200 exhibits chosen from thousands, and to wonder at the absurdity of it all. People wanted to buy it but I don’t sell. The man died of a heart attack years ago though he is immortalised here, walking in the street.

That’s how my plain paintings began and the method hasn’t really changed since that day when it discovered itself, fully formed. I have just become more conscious of it all.
This is the latest painting completed this February 2009. It’s called “Hide and Seek"

Trees Telling Tales (1990)

2009-02-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

More trees telling the same tales

2009-02-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

by an anonymous artist but used in background props from Acts of Contrition,Law and Order:Criminal Intent, Season 5 (thankyou to Props NYC04).

2009-02-24T10:54:00.001-08:00

"Facepainting" (1989)

2009-02-17T10:50:00.001-08:00

2009-02-14T04:46:00.000-08:00

The paintings on this blog are written, not drawn. As the human face tells its story in the lines that write themselves on it, so the lines in these paintings tell their stories, though the style may seem clumsy.

For these paintings do not come from any Art School Tradition, are not professional or commercial. They come out of themselves, creating their own form out of the compulsion to craft and comprehend. Hopefully they make a distinct arrangement that demonstrates the existence of a coherent if unskilled style. Not naturalistic, not cartoon, not calligraphy, not abstract, not Real or Unreal, not anything as such, they are just Not Art, which is why I call them Plain Paintings, and leave it at that.

1) The painting above is called Storytime – Two girls listen to Daddy’s bedtime stories. (2004)

Sammy Eight-leg Spider

(“What Dear? Yes I know the wind is raging outside so I thought I’d start off with a storm to distract them!”)

The storm went swish-swash-swush. It was between the 3rd and the 4th season (“what do you mean,daddy?”)Well it’s the 20minutes between Autumn and Winter. It’s called Auter. So in that 20minutes Sammy 8legs Spider went out to see what he could see. Now his legs were very tired, being 8legs, because most people have 2legs, so it follows he was 4 times as tired. He borrowed 4 bicycles (“why did he need 4?”), because he’s got 4 pairs of legs. And he cycled past cars and busses and ships and aeroplanes because now he’s 4 times as fast (“But you said...”).Dont be worrying about that now, worry about this. He lost control and went into a wall because he had no arms to steer the bike, like this, see? Bang! (Squeeze and squeal).

That gave him a sore head. Then a big lorry splattered him flat as a sheet of paper. Bang! (Squeeze and squeal). Then the wind picked him up higher and higher so that he was very flat but also very big, big enough for air traffic control to pick him up on their radar too! He was blown over the mountains and motorways till the wind dropped him in the middle of a lake. When he touched the water he soaked up like a sheet of blotting paper and bounced back to himself, only a little bigger. And he was homesick but also worried because he had grown bigger and might frighten the children.

Luckily the morning sun was very hot and it shrank him back to his normal size, so he was able to creep back through the crack in the wall to see if the girls were asleep before curling up himself to dream of his great adventures. (“Which crack daddy? This one?”) Yes, that one. And mind you tell Mammy to leave him be in the morning if she finds him there. He had a tough time of it last night.

Harry Glueface Hamster

Longer than long ago, on a building site in south west London, as the last builder went home for the night, Harry Hamster climbed in through the window, crossed the floor and walked up the plank left behind, but there was a pot of glue in the way. He banged (squeeze and squeal) his head on the pot and it fell on top of him, covering him with glue. See that’s how he got his name, Harry Glueface Hamster (giggles).

But it doesn’t end there. He walked up the plank but he couldn’t see where he was going so he walked straight into the wall and banged (squeeze and squeal) his head again. As the plank fell to the ground he was left suspended like this (gestures),half way up the wall, wriggling.

Next day the builder returned and saw Harry stuck on the wall. He called in the Interior Designer who thought it looked rather good (posh accent), asking the builder to get 123 more Hamsters and 4 pots of glue. The builder asked Harry to help him by calling up relatives and friends on his mobile phone. (“Don’t be silly,daddy!” giggle). The builder put lots of planks against the wall and the next day 123 hamsters arrived, got covered in glue and then ran at the wall, banging (squeeze and squeal) their heads against it and sticking there, wriggling.

“Much better than wallpaper” said the Interior Designer, “Thankyou”.

Mind, there were no animals harmed in the telling of this story, just children! (Squeeze and squeal).

2009-02-14T04:36:00.001-08:00

Hello.

It may be that a face is the first story we learn how to read, before we use words, a picture story.

Some fascinate, some disturb, some attract, some repel.

We read the lines.